Infrastructure of Extremism
A data visualization project mapping the Telegram networks that sustain Europe’s far-right, drawing on over 146,000 scraped messages across five interconnected channels.- Time
- Location
- Virtual
Right-wing extremist organisations have gained visibility on European streets. During orchestrated demonstrations, youth groups display banners advertising Telegram channels as offline-to-online gateways into far-right communities. Infrastructures of Extremism takes these banners as its starting point, following the network they point to and mapping the digital infrastructure that sustains ultra-nationalist ideologies across borders.
These Telegram channels form interconnected communities that enable the circulation of fascist worldviews among younger supporters. Across Germany, members of these networks maintain ties to far-right parties including Die Heimat and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). When the former AfD youth organisation Junge Alternative was banned after being classified as right-wing extremist, a successor movement,_ Generation Deutschland_, emerged through the same networks: some local groups simply renamed their channels and continued as usual, revealing how platform infrastructure absorbed the ban rather than enforcing it.
The project collects messages, mentions, and forwarded posts through automated scraping, translating them into three layered visualizations across multiple channels spanning Italy, Germany, France, and beyond. All datasets are made publicly available, positioning the investigation as both research and a counter-archival practice.
